In the final episode of the Working Title podcast, host Amina Mohamed shares an extended conversation with Abdifatah Hussein, co-founder of Hidaayah House.
“My community is happy with the work that I do. Maybe that’s enough, maybe I shouldn’t be asking for more money, you know?”
When Abdifatah Hussein was 20 years old, he took a job as custodian in a non-profit to investigate what it would take to start his own organization. The co-founder of Hidaayah House shares his perspective on making a living while working in a non-profit, his fascinating career journey, and how he feels about the organization he helped create.
This is the fourth and final podcast episode from Amina Mohamed, one of five writing/podcast fellows working with The Philanthropist Journal. The fellowship is focused on the future of work and working and was made possible through funding and support from the Workforce Funder Collaborative.
Related links
- Learn more about Abdifatah Hussein
- Learn more about Hidaayah House and follow them @hidaayahhouse on Instagram
Transcript
Amina Mohamed: Welcome back to Working Title, a podcast by The Philanthropist Journal, where we get to talk about what it’s like to work in non-profit. My name is Amina and I’m your host for today. And we have a really exciting episode lined up because this is an extended interview with Abdifatah Hussein, who is a co-founder of Hidaayah House, which is a GTA-based community organization that provides mental health support for youth. And you might have heard in our last episode about contract cycling – he has a lot to say. He’s been in the industry for over 10 years, and I get to talk to him a little bit about what that journey has been like, some of his observations, and what really encouraged him to start his own non-profit. So without further ado, happy listening. Welcome to the show, Abdifatah. Would you mind introducing yourself to our audience?
Abdifatah Hussein: Yeah, no worries. So I’m Abdifatah Hussein, chicken wing connoisseur, ha ha. No, I’m the co-founder of an organization called Hidaayah House. We’ve been around for quite some time now. Specifically, just helping and supporting people with crisis work that comes in a lot of different forms. We have a crisis support line where our community reaches out to us almost as an alternative to the police, sometimes for conflict resolution. Some family members, somebody’s experiencing an episode of psychosis, sometimes even just resumé building, whatever the case may be. But we have a team of mental health professionals and peer supports to do more than just support in crisis calls. We host a number of different events throughout the year that are catered towards the community where we often allow the community to not just share their experiences, and we give them the microphone in our town halls, but we often help them support and curate as well. People are finding gaps that we had, when we first started – we have a lack of space, lack of opportunity, funding support. We’ll help write somebody’s grants, you know, we’ll find somebody who trusts us and loves us and gives us the space for free and pass it along to those folks as well. So trying our best to create the solution-makers in our community. Because we’re the experts in our own lives and understand those problems best.
But outside of that – I won’t say professionally, because I do think that’s professional too – but I’m with the City of Toronto Community Crisis, working with the Community Crisis Response Program as a community development officer. So I respond to critical incidents across the city of Toronto – that counts as stabbings, shootings, things of that nature – and help individuals, families, and communities receive supports when those incidents occur. So actually, funnily enough, I met a lot of the people within the City while I was doing my work in Hidaayah House. Every incident they would go to they’re like, why are you here? Why is your team always here before us, you know? And then eventually, I’m able to support them with my expertise. But yeah, that’s kind of what I do right now at the moment. Also, of course, working very closely with Somali Centre for Culture and Recreation. Yeah, making sure we support in building a monumental new space for the Somali community to come organize, learn about their culture, and just generally finally have a space that we’ve always deserved. Yeah.
AM: And with 10 years of non-profit experience under your belt, and a background as a social worker, I think you’re a really unique voice in this space, and I’m really excited to speak with you.
AH: Thank you.
AM: So okay, I initially asked you, have you ever worked for non-profit before? And you said . . .
AH: Yeah, I’ve worked for like, over 10. One of them was half a job. I say that because it was like an extreme part-time, I was there for like two hours a week. There’s been times in my life where I’ve worked at three different not-for-profits at the same time with different roles, from administrative work to project managerial work to custodian work. So I’ve been all around.
AM: And okay, so am I right in assuming that you began your career in non-profit, or did you find your way in later?
AH: No. So not-for-profit was more just me. Like my first time joining – I wouldn’t really say any institutions’ names here – but when I first joined, it was just a local organization that wasn’t really serving a lot of people, and I was starting my own grassroots organization at the time, the Hidaayah House, and we had no idea about anything, about what does community work entail on a professional level. We knew you’re supposed to help people, we know that the importance is to access resources that people need. And we were kind of in the desert in Scarborough, working and supporting our people. So first step, infiltrate places that are already doing work and have different resources and seeing what’s going on. And that’s kind of how it started, was out of necessity. Like, how do you work? And how can we emulate that? And it was an interesting journey, but that’s how it started.
AM: Oh, okay, that’s so fascinating. Okay, so you were drawn to the space because you wanted to do your own thing. And you wanted to learn about the structure of a non-profit. So when you consider – first of all, how old were you when you made that investigative journey?
AH: The undercover role – I was 20 years old, 10 years ago. Second-year university.
AM: Nice. So you were still in school at the time. So you weren’t looking for, like, a full-time gig anywhere?
AH: No, I had no idea what I was gonna do. I was, like, am I going to be a lawyer when I’m done, when I finish my political science program? Am I going to be working in the UN? Like, working in community spaces was literally not at all on the table when I first started. And even the grassroots thing was more just to help my immediate community, like, literally my neighbours, and starting some sort of advocacy for them there. And some of our own problems we dealt with, but I never in my life imagined that career trajectory pathway of “I’m gonna work in these sorts of spaces,” because I didn’t know anyone who ever worked in those sorts of spaces. It wasn’t like we had a model or something to look to. When I first walked into that establishment, I was working the custodian role that I was telling you about. And I was literally – I felt like a spy, like I’m cleaning and watching around and looking. And I bumped into the ED, which I didn’t even know what that stood for until a few days later. I was, like, what is an ED? That, like, is the executive director, and I asked him out for lunch. Just ask him a bunch of questions, because I want to be the ED of my organization as well, if that’s the role we’re given, you know. And it was, like, you can’t just do that. Like, you can’t just have those conversations with him – “Is this Queen Elizabeth?” Like, I don’t know why I – just talk to him. He was cool with it. But yeah, I was not at all thinking to myself that this would be a job, you know.
AM: Okay, so you were a 20-year-old, fresh into the non-profit space there because you wanted to start your own, currently working as janitorial staff, just as your little entryway in and you met the executive director. And you said, “Buddy, let’s go out for lunch”?
AH: Yeah, let’s get to it.
AM: I love that. First of all, that’s the confidence and courage we all need to get through anything.
AH: It was a very short stint, that janitorial role. I think it was only like a week until they said, “Do you actually want to work in youth programming and stuff?” And I was like, “Yeah, for sure. I definitely would love to,” you know?
AM: I love that. I guess the way that I’m understanding your pathway in is that you took the very first job that would land you in the environment that you wanted to be in. The doors opened after that.
AH: Exactly. Actually, now that I really do think about it, I don’t know why I never considered this not-for-profit work. But my first job ever was with a community organization. There was a program called Tropicana that gave a lot of people jobs, as I’m sure you’re aware of. And everyone was getting No Frills jobs and Loblaws jobs. And I was given support with a group I’ll shout out called Por Amore, “for love” in Spanish, and they made us do a community event as youth, paint some stuff in Galloway. We actually recorded a mixtape as well. So that was just so much fun that it didn’t feel like a job, which is why I never think of it as a job. But that was even my first example of seeing, what does a group that consists of people who are community organizers look like?
AM: That’s so beautiful. I want to touch on this element, though, that you’re saying, where you didn’t really think about it as a job and it was really fun, and so you’re just happy to be there. And I think that there’s an element of non-profit work that really leans in heavily into community service and the emotional benefits and satisfaction that you get from being in service. Non-profit is often service-oriented. And so that line makes a lot of sense. If that’s what you were looking for, that’s exactly what this is. But I’m also curious about what your experience was like as an employee or as, you know, someone who is also looking to be paid for the work that they do. Because I imagine you went to Tropicana to look for a job – everyone has a story, my own family has multiple stories of Tropicana, you know, it’s a bit of an icon. But you walked in there looking for employment and you ended up in the non-profit space, so the community-oriented space, which ended up suiting you, but what was the actual experience working there? Exchanging your labour for money?
AH: Yeah, I’m gonna go back memory lane right now – I appreciate these questions. It was interesting because, especially as a young individual, you have to remember, who’s already investing all of their time into post-secondary, which is basically a long-term investment to your future that you don’t even really know is gonna exist yet. But you’re told, if you stick to this, you’re gonna get paid a good job. And this is how you can survive in this world. And then the next thing you know, you’re on your free time working a job that you’re not getting paid barely anything at all for it. I think I was getting paid the same amount as I did during my first job as a 14-year-old, you know? Which is crazy. And I was just, like, well, you give yourself the rationale at the time of what is the life of a university student, right? Like, if it wasn’t this, I’d be working at like H&M or something like that, you know?
But I will say, especially as a young, Black Somali male living in Toronto, there’s a lot of incentivized ways to make money outside of any job fields, right? So when you’re working specifically within this field, and I’m happy about this earlier, there’s like this whole entire, noble service package that it comes with, where people are just so happy you’re helping people, and of course, it puts a little bit of pride within yourself too. And that slowly trickles, and I may be skipping some steps, but over the years, it just eventually led to me on my own journey, of course, of trying to figure out originally, like, how can I best learn how to do this work, and then slowly becoming a cycle of, I’m slowly becoming a professional at helping people. This is my skill set. I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I’m not getting into any trouble. My family is happy with the work that I do. My community is happy with the work that I do. Maybe that’s enough, maybe I shouldn’t be asking for more money, you know? The fact that it’s a noble cause, that people are looking at you and saying, like, “Wow, thank you” every day. And there is, even outside of other people’s validation, it is a beautiful line of work, where you’re privileged to be with people who are genuinely, the majority of the time, at the hardest places of their lives. And they trust you with it, and you can make their day even 1% better, like, you go home happy.
But then you go home and you’re struggling. You’re in a financial position, you’re compromising your own future, the plans that you have for yourself. And this has happened to many people, but you slowly just succumb to a fate where – nobody ever says it out loud, nobody ever says to each other. But that’s just how it is in the non-profit space. That’s just how it goes. And every step of the way, from that original conversation I had with that ED, everybody looks at upper management as “Oh, that’s them, this is us. We’re doing the work.”
And I think I brought up this term of the Robin Hood complex with you, right? Of just, there is a genuine pride of anyone in community where you’re told, you are quote unquote “our saviour, you’ve made it out the block, you’re helping people, you’re doing all of these things for us.” You almost feel dirty, asking for more money, when you do that sort of work. You almost feel like, are people going to think I’m only here for the money? Because – don’t get it twisted, as I got older, and the more I did this work, there were some incredible examples of people who used community funding for a horrible thing, right? People who would apply for grants, saying it was to support people after a horrific incident, and then use it just so that they can get a lump sum amount of money and split it with their friends and have a fake community-engagement event, right? So you never want to be those guys. You never want to be associated with those people. So you go even harder to show why you’re not those guys, right? By showing not just transparency and funding this and that, but a lot of other things, and even times in my work with Hidaayah House, the fact that for years we didn’t even apply for grants. Right? Which may sound very flawed, but we were a group of volunteers that said to each other how can we ever argue over money if we don’t have any? You know? We’ve seen some very bad community politics, right? But also, just being so comfortable with scarcity, being so comfortable with so little and doing so much with so little. People would give us space in-kind, donate food, things of that nature, to the point where you’re like, “Oh, I guess this works.” But there’s a ceiling that you hit every single time, and there’s only so much that creativity can take you to, so it breeds a scarcity mindset, it breeds that Robin Hood complex work in the not-for-profit field and the lack of incentivized growth, the lack of push overall, towards higher wages and things of that nature. There’s a conversation to be had in a lot of not-for-profit spaces and organizations I worked in, where everyone’s like, if we hit 80k a year, we’ve made it. Like, as long as we touch 80k a year, because nobody’s making that, like, outside of two people in a building, there’s nobody touching 80k a year, right?
AM: As you know, I really love your Robin Hood metaphor. I think it’s really fantastic. I also think that growing up, we understand Robin Hood to be the good guy, the whole stealing from the rich and giving to the poor thing. It makes a lot of sense. But it’s, I think, a very fundamentally classist story. It’s a story about class struggle. And what I find really interesting, particularly being in Canada, is that there’s this imagined world where we’re all kind of on this flat line, you know? Everyone’s kind of okay, everyone’s in the middle, wherever that middle is. And you don’t realize until you meet people who are from different neighbourhoods that the middle actually looks really different for everyone. For some people, the middle is a million dollars. And for some people, the million is just getting by with the absolute bare minimum.
And so the concept of Robin Hood, to me, is really interesting, because I think those are conversations that we don’t have in the non-profit space. I personally have met a lot of people who are from very privileged backgrounds, and who are excited about the concept of service, because they’re looking for opportunities where they can serve, and they’re looking for the communities that they can serve. And then there are folks who come from communities that require service. And as you’re talking about the Hidaayah House, you’re looking to fill a gap that you know, very clearly, and you know how to fill it. And it doesn’t always take a lot of money to do that. It takes money – first of all, let’s let me backtrack. It takes money to do that, but it also takes care and consideration and awareness and community relationships. But those two things are not disconnected.
And so I’m curious if you have any thoughts around this, but I find that in the non-profit space, this whole service-oriented concept is often overly beneficial to people who already come from comfort. And then for folks who don’t, or for people who don’t really know what is possible in this space, because I find we talk a lot about money, and the money we don’t have or the money that we need to provide the service. But we don’t talk about salaries, we don’t talk about benefits, we don’t talk about the need to ensure that particularly people who do front-facing work have enough that they can go home and they don’t need to do two or three different jobs. That conversation, for me, is very rarely there. And I’m curious if you’ve seen that, in your own experience, if you’ve seen something a little bit different?
AH: So there’s a lot of people I know, that came from privilege as well, came into this field, acknowledge their privilege, try their best to help. But there’s a fundamental difference in knowledge of what does opportunity even look like. What does the middle, like you’ve mentioned, look like, even for me? And how do I achieve that? Because nobody’s going to ask for salary if no one in their family has ever had a salary job before, right? Nobody’s gonna understand the importance of why this job has to have benefits with pay, if nobody’s ever had benefits before, right? It’s a different scope of reality. And I can’t even call it settling, if that’s what you’ve known your whole life as being, just what a job is. What does the definition of a job entail, right? And then when you tie it into service . . . It’s interesting, when you’re able to join any sort of field, to be able to do anything, and not do it to provide for your family, is a luxury in and of itself, right? If somebody is already in a position where they’re, like, “I am good on money. I just want to do this to help people,” you’re already the best. As the Muslims say, “Hamdulilah.” You’re doing great, but, yeah, I think that’s where the ceiling is.
And I think it’s up to us as a community to really show what’s the difference in that ceiling. For example, now, I don’t work in the not-for-profit sector; I work in the public sector and I’m doing very similar work, but the pay is better, I have benefits, and this is something I never imagined doing in this field. Until I personally met other people who were doing the sort of work in this field, and had a family that they were providing for, in a good way, you know? And then they sort of taught me the ropes and I had something that I can now emulate.
And a lot of us, especially in our communities, going back to the origins of everything I was telling you, we come from a combination of just two things: I just need to make money and I want to help my people, right? Staying out of trouble, all these things is cool, but the amount of examples we have of people who are working jobs where they genuinely are never happy at the end of the day, they’re not making enough money, they never have opportunities to get more, and they never have opportunities to even see what more can look like is tragic, and the not-for-profit plays into that. Like, I think there’s a very intentional structural problem that goes on every single place that I’ve ever been, and it’s something that I can’t blame on any project manager, or project coordinator, or employing staff for HR. I think it’s just the way that not-for-profits work structurally in Canada. Where you have a front-line staff, a group of incredible people, who are often coming into this work with the tools that they’re employing, just literally being their lived experience, their trauma, and their love for community, and the fact that they don’t want other people to suffer in the ways that they’ve suffered. And then you have an opportunistic way to, like, almost represent that community given the front-line that represents you, and then the higher up you go, you have people who, almost always, don’t look like the community that they’re serving, and then eventually have people who are running the show, and they’re not really ever, like, present or seen by community. And the thing is, nobody on any one of those steps are really ever saying anything, because everyone’s just happy to be there and get paid. Like, it’s a job, right?
This isn’t me speaking on not-for-profits now, but one of my most interesting jobs I’ve ever worked on was in a factory, and the analogy is there everywhere, structurally. I was driving a pallet truck, which is this little go-kart that you drive that has carts on top, and then slowly got promoted to being a forklift driver, and everyone’s like, “A forklift driver – how did you get to that level?” You know? And then you have the person who manages the forklift drivers, and you have the truck drivers. So it’s a tough cycle to beat. It’s something that’s in a lot of different fields. But I just find it specifically exploitative when it comes to this sort of a role in this sort of a job, because people are literally saving people’s lives every day, right? Most people never really want to thank you, even though of course, that’s nice. But to be able to at least take care of their own families while they do that would be monumental.
AM: I want to come back to this Robin Hood idea, because there’s one question that I wanted to ask you, which is that Robin Hood in that image is stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. And I think you said so many times, you feel bad asking for more money and doing this job, or earning, you know, a fatter paycheque or for helping your wider community. But I’m wondering where you think, and if this is even a fair understanding, that the money that Robin Hood is taking and then disbursing to the community, do you imagine that as a salary? Or do you feel that you are Robin Hood, this is the salary that you’re getting and you’re giving to the community? Or do you feel by asking for more, that’s the theft?
AH: Interestingly enough, this is how you know the scarcity thing is so deep. Even when I first did that job, at that institution, as a custodial worker, that, in and of itself was the theft. It was just me, even knowing of a resource to share. That for me was like, stealing from the rich giving to the poor, because that’s what’s needed every single day. My community, for the most part, and the communities I’ve supported, it’s just like, is there a grant that we could apply for? Because we know how to write. Is there one because we don’t know any that exist? Is there a hotline to call if somebody’s going through an overdose? These are the things that nobody knows of. And that’s why we even started this work, was because of not even knowing if these resources existed, which is why we’ve always been okay with – the money was not even ever important at first, right? It’s something that came up, obviously, afterwards. And it is important in this work, but more than anything, resources are important. More than anything, knowledge and access to resources are important. Whenever I hear conversations about BIPOC communities and “at-risk communities” and things of that nature and marginalization, I genuinely think more than money has always been access to any sort of resource. Even access to jobs; that in and of itself is a resource. Just having a foot in the door and knowing someone that works in there. So whenever I was thinking of myself as Robin Hood, I would go home every day so happy just knowing I took all their services and I put it in a Google Doc. “I hacked a mainframe guys, let’s check this out. And let’s put this in a pamphlet for everyone so that they have it,” you know?
AM: Yeah, and what’s amazing about that is that the resources that you’re collecting should have been public knowledge anyway. But they’re just extremely hard to access.
AH: But again, it’s, like, from a not-for-profit’s perspective, why do outreach to the larger community to do that, if they can instead just come to us, and we are exclusively the only ones giving it to them? On the front line, everything’s a bit like that, right? Because again, they’re just caught in a loop where they’re maintaining their job duties. If you’re only getting paid so much, naturally you will only do what is asked of you. Why would you go above and beyond in a role, even if you love a community and your people, if you are overwhelmed with that bare minimum they’re asking you, which is a lot already. So being creative and thinking on their behalf of how to do outreach outside of your clientele, when you’re dealing with 40 different clients in a week is asinine to ask, right? And the higher up you go, the less of a responsibility it is for them to do outreach for resources outside of their catchment area, right?
So that’s how it’s always been. That’s how it still is, for the most part, right? Everybody’s focused on their niche of “This is what I do best. This is what we do.” “How do we make our program more known” as opposed to “How do we make our resources more known.” And even if they are sharing their resources with people, it’s to draw them back within the community, because, let’s really get into the meat and bones of it, every not-for-profit naturally needs more statistics, quantitative and qualitative data, so that they can get more funding, right? That’s the reason why there’s portfolios, why there’s a survey at the end of every workshop. That concept never made sense to me. We held so many events, and we’ve never done a survey once, which we should have, to increase quality and see people’s perspectives, of course. But the hunger that I would see when I would go to not-for-profits, and, like, making sure they get everyone’s input, I slowly started to realize was – of course there was that too, to see what they can do better, but more importantly, proof so that they can get more funding in the next cycle – these are the people that we serve, things of that nature. So there’s a lot of things that keep people at that status quo of not overextending and doing more than just what their program requirements are. And I completely understand that. But yeah, that’s usually why the resources aren’t really just shared publicly and freely to everyone.
AM: You know, I think that’s a very inspiring note that you’re making there. It’s very true, there’s an element where a non-profit has to survive, in order for it to provide services, it needs funding, that in order to have funding, it needs to prove that it has a need, that in order for it to have need, it can’t make up for the lack of an entire community. There have to be a variety of different organizations or companies that are participating in that as well. And also an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism. Not to sound like one of my one million TikTok videos, but it’s very true. We live in a society and also an economic structure that demands that there’s supply and demand. And that extends to the non-profit space, even though there’s an argument to be made that this space is just full of nicer, more well-meaning people with service-oriented goals. So I get that.
I want to ask you a little bit about that time period in your life where you had three jobs, because I think when you’re talking about the factory, you’re talking about the process of moving up the ladder, and learning more and more about the kinds of opportunities that exist. And I imagine with that, changes in pay scale for what might be minute differences in jobs sometimes, and sometimes it’s really large differences in jobs.
But one thing that I’m really interested in, particularly this podcast episode, is this thing that I made up that’s called “contract cycling.” And I made it up mostly because I noticed in myself and in a lot of my friends, when a job isn’t perfect – and by that I mean that the pay maybe isn’t that great but the title is good, or the benefits are great but you kind of don’t like the organization or it’s not a good fit for your career. We make really strategic choices around who we join and when, depending on what our needs are at the time. And there’s an element of that that is fundamentally financial. How much money do I need to be making right now, in order to get by? And can I make cuts to make space for other things if there’s another job that might pay a little bit less, but the benefits might be a lot better, and it might balance out at the end. And so we end up playing this game of Russian roulette with our careers, and going through all of these contract cycles, where we look for what we need right now. And that’s something that I’ve gone through quite a bit. I’ve gone through stints where I’m in non-profit and stints where I need to make real money. I need to be in the private sector, and the real private sector for a while, and then I come back. And so on and so on, the cycle continues.
And I’m really curious for you because you said there was a time period in your life where you had three consecutive jobs, all at the same time. And I’m wondering if that is similar to what I’m describing, when I say contract cycling? Or if that’s a completely different thing and you were looking for different things in each job and you were in your Inspector Gadget exploratory era, you know?
AH: I mean, yeah, sure, I’ll answer that. But first, even the concept that we’re contract cycling is something that, again, just plays into the fact that a lot of us are really just trying our best to balance our happiness, or our finances. And that’s an impossible choice to make. Ideally, of course, everyone in this world would be able to have an incredible balance of both where you’re, like, financially fulfilled and spiritually fulfilled and happy. But just, this seems to be a very improbable thing, for the most part, not saying that it’s impossible.
But something that I’ll work towards, something I’ve definitely been, when I was working those three jobs, that was just me taking advantage of the pandemic, I’ll be completely honest. Everything was virtual for the first time, I no longer was driving across the city, I had four screens, lined up on top of each other like this, like I was hacking into the matrix. Pausing one Zoom meeting, hopping onto the next. It was super illegal, for sure. But it was just one of those opportunities that came by that I’ll probably never have again. But again, it’s spoken to the fact that one not-for-profit job really wouldn’t cut it for me. The amount of money I was making, in terms of – and I don’t mean just paying the bills, I don’t mean just being able to pass off my phone bills, and my house bills, and having food in the fridge. I mean, the concept of even saving for a day that I’m not even planning for, not for any specific reason, not for a flight, not for even an emergency, just money to have for the sake of having money is a privilege that I barely know anyone that can afford, right? And I said for the first time, I really want to have that. I just want to have money that’s piling up for the sake of piling up. And that being that, right? And I had the privilege of all of them just so happened to be in the not-for-profit sector. I put my 100% into each one of them. I feel like incredibly horrible, thinking that, you know, I may neglect people that actually genuinely need my help and I’m giving each of them 50%. So I became four Abdis, in each screen, you know? But yeah, that was that situation.
AM: Can I just say that’s phenomenal. The fact that you were even able to show up to all of those different meetings, because I cap my day at two or three meetings, you know? That’s enough. You’ve had enough of me. That’s really incredible. But I think there’s something to be said, though, for the motivation behind you doing that. I mean, you’ve gone above and beyond contract cycling – you contract stacked. But I think I was saying the motivation is really justified because what you were looking for was not just to be able to get by, but to be able to also have some savings. And I don’t think that’s a particularly radical hope, you know?
AH: But it felt like it at the moment. That’s the funny part. And that goes back to that Robin Hood complex that we were talking about, right? Like the fact that subconsciously, just a bit of me says, “There’s no way you should be making money if you’re trying to help people.” Especially as a young Black man, your intention should be pure, be the sacrificial lamb for your people that they need, which is this like – it’s crazy, because nobody needs to die for anyone to help. You know, if anything, the more I think about it, I’m actually a better service to people if I myself am in a better position. If I am fulfilled, if I’m not stressing about my family, how they’ve been taken care of, I’m able to put gas in my tank. Of course, I’ll be more present when I support others.
And this is literally an epiphany I had just about last year, where one of the youth that I work with – I won’t call myself his mentor, because he teaches me a lot too. But he was in a position where he’s in grade 10 trying to figure out what’s he going to do for work, and I told him honestly, I told him, “Do not decide something like that right now. Just do whatever you want to do. Dibble your toes in every single thing you think is fun, or creative or whatever, build a bunch of skill sets. If you don’t like it, leave it, do something else, but that’s way too much of a decision to make now.” And I hate the education system for making us think that we have to lock that in so early. That’s a conversation for another day though. But he looked at me and he said, “I’m not gonna lie, I think I want to do community work.” And I was like, “Why?” He’s like, “I see you, you look like you’re well taken care of, you look like you’re okay. Your family looks like they’re doing good, you look like you’re happy. You take care of your family, and you’re helping people. Why wouldn’t I want to help people and make money?”
It was so deep to me, because all my life, I was looking for people that can emulate success for me. And I definitely don’t feel like I’m there yet, for sure. But the fact that that was an option for him, the fact that he had something that he could look at, whether it was me or anybody else, and think to himself, “I can help people and make money,” that just shattered everything for me. I think from that point onward, I was very much done with that Robin Hood complex.
AM: I mean, I think so much of the advice on LinkedIn is based on what you’re saying right now. Like, find a mentor, find someone who emulates where you want to be, and see if you can get them to champion you, that is career advice #1. Influencers have built their entire platform off that one piece of advice just because of how profound it is. And so the fact that you saw that in that young man is really incredible. Because when you don’t have that, you really don’t have a foundation to work with, you don’t really know where you’re going, you don’t even know what’s possible, you don’t know who to talk to, and you don’t know what steps to take. It’s difficult to build a career in that way. And even with community work, or non-profit work in general, you can end up stuck in this horrible loop where you’re never being paid well. And you don’t really know where to go, and you don’t know what to ask for, and all of this stuff.
I love so much about what you’re saying, but most importantly, I think what we tell ourselves and what we’re told when we’re younger, and what we all aspire to is that if you don’t like something, you can just fix it; if you don’t like something, it can always be changed – exactly what you’re saying right now. But you embody that. You snuck your way into some non-profits, you saw some community work happening, you said, “No, I don’t really like the structure,” and you created something that’s a lot more organic and a lot more reflective of the people that you want to serve. And as I mentioned at the top, the byproduct of that is that you have so much community trust and buy-in, you have the most priceless assets, and you have nowhere to go but up. And so I really appreciate the work that you’ve done, the impact of Hidaayah House, and the time that you took out today to talk to me about your career trajectory, and also your optimism for the sector. I appreciate so much of that.
AH: Not broken yet. Hopefully never. But thank you for your time. Really appreciate it, Amina. I think, a lot of room for like reflection itself, because a lot of these are thoughts that I think often, I speak rarely, and I almost never get fully fleshed out, because we’re just caught up in the work, right?
AM: Big thank-you once again to Abdifatah for sharing so much of his wisdom and experience with us. It’s so inspiring to hear from community leaders who are transforming our sector for the better one project at a time.
Now that doesn’t just bring us to the end of this episode, but also to the end of our four-part series. This project was made possible by The Philanthropist Journal’s fellowship on work and working. They have made space to have really interesting, curiosity-driven, engaging conversations on both the present and the future of the non-profit sector. Thank you so much to Jillian, Lesley, Radiyah, and the rest of the TPJ team because none of this would have been possible without all of them. Thank you so much for listening.
